12.30.2005

Migraine won't break; storm won't stop
The dry wind, the wet wind, the hungry wind

Drip swirl rivel sluice moan hiss howl
The house stands still, wind and water moving

12.29.2005

Winter clears a way
Nothing gold can stay

12.28.2005

Sky empties and empties
Rain falls and falls

Minimal hills
Shining mountain

12.27.2005

Food is on the table, the rain comes down
Earth barely warmer, but the weight tremendous

12.26.2005

The story of life is stories broken against other stories
The endlessly breaking news betrays a fear of contemplation

Body curls, muscles shrink, gait slows to steady, death waits
Reading a draft of her elegies I realize rain too is a jungle

12.25.2005

Time is a journey not a clock
The heart is a clock, the mind is time

A plane exists alongside the world
A world exists alongside the road

12.24.2005

Trucks bottleneck traffic while miles trundle and tick past
Circle of fallen leaves glows around each tree in the orchard rows

12.23.2005

Vowels are first awareness, the consonants full consciousness
Language, born from rhythm & repetition in the heart's vowels & consonants

12.22.2005

You come across it & it's changed, every time changed & that changes you
Circle breaks, no other apparent; no pattern in ceaseless curl & plunge

12.21.2005

Time falls always from us and the days don't stop
We can't go on we do go on we can't we can we do we do

12.20.2005

Not done with the urge to lash back at death, to hurt what hurts you
The fuel of sadness powers you to every available destination

12.19.2005

You can't trust death: hiding, waiting, hiding, pouncing, never content
Press back against the difficult, don't die back day by day

12.18.2005

Waking and asleep, nightlong rain, mixed with relentless death
The heart contains only persistence and promise, no praise now

If I hadn't forgotten him he would still be alive (no child)
Had I only gone there instead, he wouldn't be dead (no no no)

12.17.2005

His heart stopped this morning, tonight rain is talking talking talking
Newborn, living, dying, imponderable dead, new dead, the dead

The young don't know, the old don't know, even the dead don't
Amid the immutable arrivals and departure of all things, my time

12.16.2005

5 a.m. — full moon low in the northwest sky where sun can't go these days
2 p.m. — wind streaming through curbside gingko, gold leaves shimmering

12.15.2005

What was is not now, this keeps happening
Full moon moves slow, steady, as we sleep

12.14.2005

The cold cold came so suddenly the bright bougainvillea's bright in it
The cold hazy, the earth dry, air not moving, sun not warming

12.13.2005

Brainstem thinking hibernate through this pale December light
Flesh craving red heat and touch of other flesh all the frigid night

12.12.2005

Incompetent leaders dull public joy, destroy common wealth
Tell me again what necessities gave these leaders their place

12.11.2005

How we live now is improvised, as always
For what's on my plate I've got little in mind

12.10.2005

Skirt flirt dirt spurt hurt yurt quirk perk jerk lurk murk work fork dork
Shallow wind-blown waves skirt the bay, pattern repeated in difference

12.09.2005

The President repeats: As our allies stand up we will stand down
Grandpa surprised them with: Well that made my baster stand up

12.08.2005

Aftermath wind soughs over the house at midnight
The tasks of extinction cannot be absorbed by this world

Sound of the ballpoint on its way across the empty sheet
How long we needed the word extinct without knowing it

Absence: the structure of feeling what's gone
Language: the structure of absence

Joy: happiness that stays after consciousness of happiness
Heaven: home built entirely of words

12.07.2005

Dreams are not endogenous but their audiences are
Spurts signaled a pleasant descent had fathomed night

That music's awfully gawky for the mood we're in
We follow the label's instruction which is now to sit and wait

12.06.2005

Though each thing fits in somehow, a few stand out through belonging
The form of the sonata tumbling in a stream belongs to endogenous triumph

12.05.2005

I said the gone is gone but I’d reconsider
To bracket the weather was clearly premature

How did this happen can’t be asked, soon not even where are we going
Your life sits a while with you but can’t stay, you don’t get to ask

Who understands flowers, dragged into love, left for the dead
What can be said, in the end wildness comes home to roost

12.04.2005

The Blob was sensational; computers changed everything; sanity evolves
Some good ideas have their day, but every heart knows the night

Mostly I wander and gather and try to remember and talk it over
Every thing created, noticed by a Heavenly Eye – like that’s doable

12.03.2005

I was thinking I used to think time’s necessary, now now’s its own frontier
It's a long time since we’ve had a New Frontier, could this be the last gasp?

Over by the burnt orange sweaters from that season, that season’s dreams
Oil futures fluctuate, viruses spread & fluctuate, fecundity’s irreversible

12.02.2005

After a rainy week, two black ants wander in the sink's scree of poppy seeds
When we step outside to seize the day, there's a new set for the next act